Life on the road (bike!)

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Mike

To paraphrase the Simon & Garfunkle song, Gee but it’s great to be back on the bike, ‘cuz on the bike is where I want to be, I’ve been on the road so long, it’s the same old story and I’m sure you wouldn’t disagree.

I both feared and looked forward to yesterday morning’s ride, having been off the bike for a full week (!!!) and gained 2.5 pounds (half a pound a day is pretty much the norm for me for the first week or so; thank goodness it levels out after that; clearly the damage is done quickly!). Thankfully, heading up away from my house everything just felt right. I was home. I was on a bike, the only thing I can comfortably do for any real length of time. No squirming, no sore shoulders, no stress. That last one was strange. I really thought I’d be dreading my added weight and lack of fitness, but no, everything was good.

Maybe it was because we were literally in a fog. Visibility for the first half hour was dismal, so bad that you couldn’t even see the large group at the start of the ride until we were almost upon them. But once in a while the fog clears when you wish it hadn’t, and today that was at the exact point on Kings where Kevin (my son, not the pilot) decided to ditch dad and join the fast guys up front. And yet I was perfectly happy with my 28-something time.

I’ll next be off the bike for a week towards the end of March, when I head to DC for the annual Bike Summit, the big event where 300-500 bicycle advocates meet with every congressional office in DC to try and make this a better place for cycling. Normally I’d just miss one ride, on Thursday (the event is on Wednesday & Thursday, normally allowing me to fly out on Tuesday after the ride and return Thursday night or Friday), but this year I’m a board member for the NBDA (National Bicycle Dealer Association) which has meetings on Monday & Tuesday. Not fun being away from the shop for 4 or 5 days again, and even less fun being off the bike for a week! –Mike–

Posted in Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride | Leave a comment

Life on the road / does this bed need more pillows?

Posted on February 17, 2012 by Mike

Wednesday morning I was home, that night in Nashville and now in Minneapolis before returning home late Sunday night. If I was just traveling to one place it would seem very different, just a short business trip, one of many. But something changes when you’re finished at your first stop and then, instead of coming home, you head somewhere else. Somewhere you cross an imaginary line that separates the normal trip from one that gives a taste of life on the road and a sense that a hotel is your home. A momentum builds suddenly when that next flight takes you somewhere else, not home.

20120218-003356.jpg

Posted in Advocacy & Local Issues, Shop news | Leave a comment

The Internet never forgets

Posted on February 16, 2012 by Mike

Got this email today-

Hello,
We’re interested in placing a promotional link on: http://www.chainreaction.com/tdfdrugscandal.htm for a websiteabout Drug Rehabilitation.

If you already have an arrangement or ad rates in mind, We’d be more than glad to hear from you.

Regards,

Valerie Elden
http://sellyourwebsiteads.com/
Toll Free: 1-800-208-6257

If you go to the link mentioned- http://www.chainreaction.com/tdfdrugscandal.htm, you’ll find a short piece I wrote in 1998 about the latest cycling drug scandal. Some robot searching the ‘net found the content to be something that someone interested in drug rehabilitation might read. Too late though; Marco Pantani (mentioned in my piece) died in 2004.  –Mike–

Posted in Personal stuff | Leave a comment

Gotham City?

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Mike
You tell me, does this look like a scene from a Batman movie or what? It’s actually downtown Nashville, Broadway to be precise. The home of many, many Elvis shops and high-fat eateries.

So what are Steve and I doing in Nashville? We’re here to attend a high-level fitting seminar for tri bikes, so we can make our fastest customers even faster! But don’t worry, nobody’s turn me into a triathlete, not as long as one of the three events involves running.

 
I really had no idea how many of our customers did a fair amount of running until Strava.com came along, where people post their cycling and running gps data.
 
So tomorrow (Thursday) Kevin (my son, not the pilot) will be out on the regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning ride while I’m likely eating an excessive amount of tasty but artery-clogging food. I’ll be there in spirit, and look forward to looking at Kevin’s Strava download. It will be interesting to see how he does without me holding him back.
 
This is a two-day seminar but instead of flying home Friday night, I head to Minneapolis for a distributor’s show called, appropriately, Frostbike. And then Sunday night I’m home. Six flights, nothing heroic, but I’m sure going to be missing the bike! And my wife, and kids, and the people at the shop who hold things together and keep our customers happily cycling.  –Mike–
Posted in Shop news | Leave a comment

Just when you thought you were having a bad day…

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Mike

A bit cool this morning, but a pretty big group (over 10, and my limit for roll call is about 7). Got off to a ragged start as Kevin (my son, not the pilot) got a flat tire less than a minute into the ride. We patched him up and got moving, but it took a while for him to come back up to speed, such that I actually caught back up to him on Kings, a rare thing these days!

At least one person had a much worse day than I did today.

It was descending 84, just before the bottom that we found someone who had a really bad day. Guess it puts into perspective the many things that didn’t quite go as planned for me today, including a lengthy issue with Comcast, trying to install a new phone system in our Redwood City location and not quite getting things right. Oh, and on the way home, picking up some flowers for my wife, only to have them totally spill out onto the seat.

Posted in Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride | Leave a comment

Why we ride #84- To support local businesses

Posted on February 12, 2012 by Mike

After that bacon shake at Jack In The Box last week, a coke and polish sausage seems like health food! And it sure tastes a lot better. Of course, after the bacon shake I could sleep (or was it a coma?) but today we’ve got quite a distance to cover before arriving home.

20120212-142046.jpg

(Next section added after the ride)- Details on our ride below. The original intention was to descend West Alpine and head back up 84, but the fog was so thick on Skyline (and all points west) that I decided to get the heck out of there and did a rare descent of Page Mill instead. Not that tough a ride at exactly 100k (had to ride around the block once home to get in the required mileage), but it did include Redwood Gulch, so it could hardly be called easy.

Kevin ended up with a string of personal best times for various segments, something which is to be expected as he continues to improve, but only if he rides on ahead of me! I can match and even beat him on a relatively-shallow grade, and can still outsprint him, and if the ride’s long enough, outlast him. But not for long, unless I really step up my game. The steeper stuff? That ship has sailed. Unless I wake up some morning with a new pair of lungs. :-)     –Mike–

Posted in Ride reports (not Tu/Th) | Leave a comment

Why We Ride #391- Because you’d be crazy to miss a day like this!

Posted on February 9, 2012 by Mike


How would you feel if you had a chance to ride on a morning like this, and passed it up, only to see this photo later on? Well, how do you feel about it? :-)

Whether motivated by the fear of missing out, or the fun of laughing at our “winter” this year, we had quite a large group for our regular Tuesday/Thursday-morning no-matter-what ride. Too large to try and name them all, but not quite so large that my slowness up Kings Mtn could be hidden from the rest. That’s OK, this is “winter” after all! And I have to face facts; as I’ve gotten older, I’m doing increasingly better on longer rides (100k+) and simply can’t quite come up to speed on short “sprints” like our regular 30 miler. And watching Kevin (my son, not the pilot) do so well on this ride brings back memories of my own rides at his age. I owned rides like this back then. Just as he is beginning to do now.

What this means for us more-experienced folk is that we’ve got to consider that not everything about getting older is bad; that we still have some advantages over the younger cyclists, and if we want to exploit those advantages, we can put them into a world of hurt just like they do to us on the shorter rides. Except that we wouldn’t do that, because it wouldn’t be nice. OK, that’s fine for dealing with 18-25 year-old cyclists. Past 25, they begin to do better at those longer rides, without slowing down much on the shorter ones. You’re only hope, if you’re a 55-year-old has-been/never-was (some day I’ll figure out which) like me, is that somewhere between 25 & 40 they become moms or dads and spend a lot of time & energy raising their own future nemesis.

Which brings things full-circle, as did an email I got today from a distribution list for “old timer” cyclists. In this edition, a 20 page pdf of the 1966 Tour del Mar (now called the “Pescadero Road Race”) was attached, and on page 14 was a piece written by my father, then Sports Editor of the Redwood City Tribune. I’m sure my father had no idea at that time that I would become so strongly attached to cycling, or even consider taking up racing, but it shows his openness to sports other than Basketball, Baseball, Football and Track & Field. Hard to believe he’s been gone for 24 years now (I could be off by a year on that, and if so, I’m sure my mom will be correcting me shortly). He was around for the first 8 years or so of Chain Reaction Bicycles, and died just a few months after the birth of his first grandchild. While the beginning of “desktop publishing” enabled him to have a second career after the demise of the local newspaper, the internet was not yet even someone’s wildest dream. It is interesting to think of what he would be doing now.  –Mike–

Posted in Personal stuff, Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride | Leave a comment

This morning’s ride a wash-out (so to speak)

Posted on February 7, 2012 by Mike

What the weather was supposed to be. Talk about a no-show!

How ironic that I’m disappointed in this-morning’s ride because it didn’t rain. But after last night’s weather forecast… 100% chance of rain from 7am-11am… how could it miss? Kevin and I got out everything. All the nasty-weather gear, charged up all the lights (figured in really nasty conditions we’d be needing our most-powerful headlights), and went to bed thinking we’d be woken up by howling wind and rain striking the windows in the middle of the night.

This screenshot at 7:10am accurately shows the "no rain zone" protecting us

Nope. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. It rained not a single drop on us. It was as if we were being protected by a “no-rain zone”, a big hole in the green (the color of rain on the weather map). It’s not as if it looked exactly friendly looking out the kitchen window as we made coffee and got ready to ride, but it didn’t look like that one epic day of rain we were expecting either.

It gets worse. Heading out on my rain bike, loaded with stuff I wasn’t going to need (like a heavy plastic rain jacket), Kevin and I immediately run into Nigel, heading up Jefferson to the start of the ride. And Nigel has his “nice” bike, the Madone 5.1 he picked up last week, the bike that makes him even faster than normal. And me, I’m feeling, well, tired & slow & old & broken. Just one of those high-gravity mornings, y’know?

It still gets worse. At the base of the climb Kevin (pilot), Kevin (son), Nigel and I are joined by Marcus, again on on light bike with no fenders, no rain gear. To say I struggled and was far behind on Kings is an understatement. I even wondered what the point was, after I lost sight of everyone, before half-way up the hill. Thankfully I recovered enough to suck wheels for the rest of the ride, and finished feeling better than I thought and much better than if I hadn’t ridden at all. But no epic conditions, no cool video to show. Another day. –Mike–

Posted in Tues/Thurs 7:45am ride | Leave a comment

The Look

Posted on February 6, 2012 by Mike

Approaching the top of Old LaHonda and Kings for the first time. Notice the similar expression.

On yesterday’s ride I couldn’t help but notice an expression on a few riders that looked very familiar. We’ll call it “The Look.” Not quite the version we’re used to (where Lance turned around and either sized up or stared down his competition on the Alpe d’Huez a decade ago), but just as symbolic. It’s that combination of presumed relief (is it really over???!!!) and “Why did I do this?” Shortly afterward comes the feeling of accomplishment, and maybe a smile, but that last 20 feet or so, especially when you’re not really sure if that’s the end, what you see in those photos is what you get.

Oh sure, you can pretend everyone’s all smiles & happy at that point, but pictures don’t lie. :-)

Posted in Personal stuff | Leave a comment

Why we ride #19: To drink a bacon shake and not wear it

Posted on February 5, 2012 by Mike

Jack-In-The-Box's Bacon Shake. Seriously. And it's as bad as it sounds.

The Superbowl- do you watch it for the game, or the commercials? Unfortunately I paid too much attention to one of the Jack-In-The-Box ads, the one promoting their site “Marrythebacon.com” And so, after the day’s ride, after the Superbowl, it was off to Jack-In-The-Box for something I felt funny even asking for, because, after all, you assume that it’s a joke, that there really isn’t such a thing as a bacon-flavored shake. But there is such a thing, and trust me, you don’t want one. My first impression was that it tasted like cigarette-flavored ice cream. Oh Snap! It’s true that “riding to eat” doesn’t work; you’ll inevitably eat more than you should. But eating something like a Bacon Shake without riding would be worse!

Kevin and I did have a great ride today. Strava details below; in a nutshell, a 100k ride starting in Woodside, up Old LaHonda, south on Skyline, descent on West Alpine, over Haskins to Pescadero, Stage Road and then up Tunitas and down Kings.

5 minutes up Old LaHonda I cut Kevin loose; I really thought he was going to get a personal record but he missed it by about 15 seconds. He’s still just over 20 minutes for the climb, but he’s now riding consistently fast for the entire ride. And he’s famous; on our way through Woodside we passed a group of 4 cyclists, one of whom said “You’re the father & son team! I read you blog all the time!” So one more person who knows that Kevin’s speeding up while I’m slowing down.

As long as the grade isn’t too steep, I’m OK. Kevin’s sweet spot seems to be around 7-8%, which pretty much mirrors my weakness on climbs these days. Steeper, and I can gut it out. 3-5% and I’m sucking that fast wheel in front of me like my life depends upon it. And if it’s not too long I can even manage the 7-8% stuff, like the bumps on Stage Road. But on Tunitas, once we get to the Bridge of Death, it’s all over (and so today, climbing Tunitas, that’s where bid Kevin adieu and met him at the top, a couple minutes after he arrived).

Posted in Ride reports (not Tu/Th) | 2 Comments